# Patrick Moore and climate change **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 26, 2015, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patrick-moore-and-climate-change/738638 "2015-11-26T15:27:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2015, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patrick-moore-and-climate-change/738638/41 "2015-11-29T02:32:06Z")
Any good scientific calculation includes error bars. If you know the uncertainties in your inputs (and you should), you can calculate not only your results, but the uncertainties in your results. Climate scientists know the uncertainties in their inputs, and have calculated the uncertainties in their outputs, and even at the lower end of their error bars, the conclusion is still clear, that climate change is happening, we’re causing it, and it’s causing and will continue to cause major problems. You can’t just make that go away by saying “But they don’t know everything! There are uncertainties!”, because, like all good scientists, they’ve already taken that into account. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2015, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patrick-moore-and-climate-change/738638/42 "2015-11-29T02:53:12Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > You are an example of the politics involved. That you would use something as childish as the term “denier” to shut down discussion is typical of the political mindset. Tell it to the dictionary makers, you lost that battle in the middle ages. As for politics, it is clear that you can not explain why the groups that defend the schools that teach evolution had to add the defense of climate science too should had been a clue about this not being an issue about politics, once again powerful groups from some industries made it so for some politicians. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2015, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patrick-moore-and-climate-change/738638/43 "2015-11-29T03:13:16Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Nuh uh is not a good response and no, the inaccuracies used for global warming predictions have not been refuted. I’ve actually suggested the basics right here when I talked about the many diverse multiple lines of evidence for both the modern temperature record and the longer term paleoclimate record, which lead to our confidence in the temperature record and our understanding of its relationship to the forcings of greenhouse gases and long-term climate response to those forcings. All we get from you is claims that thermometers aren’t accurate, tree ring proxies only show rain, climate models don’t work, and assorted other gibberish suggesting that climate science knows nothing, which doesn’t even have anything to do with the topic. A search through SDMB will show that it’s all been discussed before, and I’ve discussed much of it myself extensively here in just the past two years and it’s all there if you look for it. I’m not going to discuss it here any further because I’m trying to follow moderator instructions to stay on topic and not digress into another completely pointless “debate” in the wrong forum about matters long since resolved. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2015, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patrick-moore-and-climate-change/738638/44 "2015-11-29T03:39:00Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Nuh uh is not a good response and no, the inaccuracies used for global warming predictions have not been refuted. That is news to the ones that continue to use data from Michael Mann and many others that analyzed the data. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/-67KJWwpjBM/maxresdefault.jpg "Dr Jennifer Francis (Rutgers) - "Rapid Arctic Warming ...." - Part 1 of 3") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-67KJWwpjBM) (at 8:19 Jennifer Francis at Rutgers demonstrates that also Polar researchers that predict the weather better than others **continue** to use the data that Michael Mann and others reported from the Paleo climate record also. The so called inaccuracies you are reporting are not a show stopper as it is your pumped up doubts about the computer modeling that the climate scientists are using) It is odd that nowhere in this thread you are not willing or able to defend Patrick Moore, and the contrarians have not demonstrated how valid the inaccuracies they claim affect the current understanding. They have been a failure and they are only continue to discredit themselves. Real Skeptics that check the actual data not only confirmed what Mann and others found, their independently made modeling also confirmed also what many other scientists found before. (Professor Richard Muller, skeptic funded by the Koch brothers only to find how the other scientists were correct all along) > [@](#): > > **But these were all people [top skeptical scientists (who now are former skeptics)] who shared the same doubts that I had**. So we wound up doing an enormous effort completely rebuilding a program to use historic temperature records and did it in what we believed to be the best statistical approach to doing this we managed to put together a record. > > We studied the systematics…I had no hope that we would able to wrestle all the systematics. > > In the end we could. > > And that came as a wonderful surprise to me, each one required a great deal of effort; poor station quality; the urban heat island effect, the data adjustment that’s been done; and most important of all: the data selection bias, the fact that every other team was using less than 20 percent of the data and in some cases only about seven percent their data, so how they pick their data? And does that lead to a bias? Even an inadvertent bias? > > So we managed to address all these and in the end we got a nice curve that showed the temperature and it was rising! Now, we never expected to address the question of what caused it. > > I tried fitting it to an exponential… > > That actually wasn’t very good fit… Try a parabola… > > No, it wasn’t a good fitting either, okay try the US population… no, that wasn’t so good. > > Hey dummy! :smack: Try carbon dioxide!.. > > Smack on! > > … > > **Not only was global warming real and roughly consistent with what the previous groups had said but the match to carbon dioxide and the fact that solar variability was not responsible… we just had ruled out the primary alternative theory.** > > Another alternative theory is that the absence of volcanic eruptions in the recent period is why it’s warmer but we could see these individual volcanic eruptions because we went back further in time and we can see that their effect was temporary so we can rule out the other one, in fact we can rule out every scientific theory other than the greenhouse gas theory. > > **Now there are some people who say “Oh, I believe it’s something else” “That there were changes in the earth’s orbit”… I wrote a book on the changes of the earth’s orbit, a technical book meant for graduate-level study on the so called milankovitch cycles, it doesn’t match those!** > > Some people say “Well there’s something else going on!” and I say “what is the prediction you make?” “Oh, I don’t know, it’s random”… That’s not what we call a scientific theory. > > **If you say “well it’s something else and I don’t know what is” my answer is:** > > \*\*Something else that just happens, by accident, to perfectly match the carbon dioxide increase… > > Are you serious?\*\* ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2015, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patrick-moore-and-climate-change/738638/45 "2015-11-30T23:36:03Z")
OK not _the_ Patrick Moore. I was about to launch a spirited defense of the British TV astronomer [Sir Patrick Moore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Moore). Who was awesome if completely bonkers (and very deceased). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/patrick-moore-and-climate-change/738638.md?page=2)